Chapter 15
Jeff leaned back and closed his eyes as he waited for Dr. Fitzgerald. His stomach hurt, as if there were a black cauldron of fire brewing within it. Tums didn’t help, neither did any other over-the-counter stuff he had tried. He wondered if this whole thing with Sara had caused a raging ulcer.
“Hello, Jeff.”
Jeff gazed at Dr. Fitzgerald and sighed. He felt as though he should be talking to anyone else but the good doctor. Or maybe he just wanted to be spewing his tale to someone who wasn’t recording his every word and judging every nuance he made. Maybe someone like the local drunk at the bar in his neighborhood. Jeff knew that guy, Martin, had been through four divorces—two because his spouse had cheated on him, and two because he had cheated on them. Martin loved every single one of his wives. Perhaps Jeff should be discussing the “Sara issue,” as he had begun to think of it, with Martin.
“Are you ready?” Dr. Fitzgerald asked.
Jeff forced a smile. “Sure.” He sunk into the chair and pulled the side lever on the chair to bring up the footrest.
“How are you today?” Dr. Fitzgerald asked.
His stomach rolled and churned. “Fine. And you?”
“Can you tell me the end of your story? How you found out Sara was cheating on you?”
Of course: answer a question with a question. Jeff dug his fingernails into the leather armrest and took a deep breath.
“Sure. I’ll tell you how I found out.”
The images came spiraling back and played before him as if they were a high-definition movie.
After getting off work early one Wednesday night, he had gone to the university library where Sara said her study group met. He wanted to surprise her and take her out to a late dinner.
But she wasn’t there.
He walked through that damn library four times and didn’t see her.
As he’d stepped out into the warm night air, he looked around the campus. Large trees reached up to the dark sky and people milled about. Jeff never regretted not going to college—he had wanted to be a cop since he was six years old when an officer stood in his first-grade classroom and spoke about good decisions versus bad decisions, and how every action had a consequence. Jeff admired the officers’ uniform and badge as he listened to him speak, and when the officer said the main part of his job was to help and protect others, that was it for Jeff. He never gave a second thought to any other career.
A group of laughing co-eds walked past him, and he caught bits of conversation about a party the night before. Jeff smiled and walked down the pathway past the Humanities building where he saw a couple walking hand-in-hand out of the corner of his eye, forcing him to do a double take. There was no way that was Sara. He closed his eyes and rubbed them with the palms of his hands. He read somewhere that everyone had a twin somewhere in the world, and apparently he had just found his wife’s. A strangled laughed escaped his throat, and he turned back to watch them.
The woman reminded him so much of Sara, he needed to follow her. It was the sway of her hips, the way she pushed her hair back behind her ears and tilted her head as she listened to what the man had to say. God, he would swear it was Sara. But it couldn’t be. His mind couldn’t wrap around that his Sara would be walking through campus holding another man’s hand.
Pain lurched through him, but he continued to tail them and refused to believe he was watching his wife. The couple stopped walking and faced each other, and Jeff backed up into the shadow of one of the trees.
The man brought his lips to the woman’s, and she snaked her arms around his neck, pulling him closer. Jeff felt as though his world was crumbling around him, but he couldn’t look away. The man wrapped his arms around the woman’s waist, their bodies melding together.
After a moment, they separated. Jeff continued to stare.
The man said something and the woman pulled out her phone. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he did catch the distinct sound of Sara’s laugh, which was something he hadn’t heard in quite a while. The sound resonated in him like a kick to the groin. The phone screen lit up the woman’s face, her full lips still wet from the stranger’s kiss. She pushed her hair behind her ear as she smiled, a smile he hadn’t seen in a long time. It was the grin of true happiness that began in her soul and lit up her whole face.
Jeff studied the man in the low light of the phone. He was tall and reed-thin with a ponytail, a goatee, and John Lennon glasses. His jeans hung from his skinny hips, and a pink button-down shirt opened at the collar draped over his thin shoulders. They continued down the path until they reached the parking lot and got into the man’s car.
Anger tore through Jeff, and he knew he should just go home, but he had to see this through. He had to know who the man was and where he was taking his wife, and why she was going. He briefly went over the past few months of their marriage and couldn’t find any reason for her to stray. They had been getting along—no major arguments. Two days ago he’d brought her to orgasm, or so he thought. He’d always imagined his marriage lasting as his parents’ had, but apparently Sara had different ideas. His marriage apparently wasn’t as solid as he believed.
God, he was going to be sick.
Jeff followed them to a small house about three miles off campus and parked across the street. His heart pounded as he watched his wife enter the house with the man. The lights illuminated the living room, and Jeff watched in horror as the man pulled Sara into his arms and kissed her passionately. The man pushed up Sara’s sweater and licked her breast through the white bra, and a stone settled in Jeff’s chest. Then Sara, laughing giddily, playfully pushed the man away and closed the curtains.
Jeff peeled away from the curb, drove two blocks, then erratically pulled over to the side of the road, heaved open the door, and vomited in the street.
“What happened then, Jeff?” Dr. Fitzgerald asked.
“I kept puking until I could barely breathe.”
“Tell me your feelings at that point.”
“I wanted to die. I wanted to kill the guy. I wanted to scream at Sara. I was confused. I was hurt.”
“All understandable. Please, go on.”
As Jeff drove home, he called a friend at the station and asked him to look up the owner of the house.
“It was her professor,” Jeff snarled. “Dr. Phillip Taft was fucking my wife when he was supposed to be teaching her the finer points of English literature.”
There was a beat of silence as the shrink made notes on his yellow notepad.
“And what happened then, Jeff?”
“I went home and Sara arrived about two hours later.”
“Did you confront her?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“How did that go?”
“I didn’t handle it very well.”
When Jeff arrived home, he lost it. He looked at all the pictures of them in happier times scattered around the apartment and his rage took over. He smashed them all except the one of them at the fair. When Sara came home, he was sitting on the couch, staring out the window. A table lamp softly illuminated the living room.
“Hi, honey,” she said. “How was work? Did you just get home?”
Jeff remained quiet. The mess and his silence apparently hadn’t registered to her. Her hair was mussed, and she kept running her fingers through it as she got a glass of water. “The study session went really well,” she said, going through the mail. “I’m wiped though. I think I’ll take a shower and head to bed.”
As she made her way into the living room, she saw the mess. “What happened here?”
Jeff stood, glaring at her. “Why don’t you tell me how it felt to have your professor’s cock buried inside you?”
She gasped and took a step back. “What are you talking about?” she asked.
“Don’t try to hide it, Sara. I saw all of it. I even followed you to his house.”
He bent down and picked up the picture of them on their wedding day taken at the end of
the reception. Sara sat on his lap dressed in her wedding gown. He held a beer in one hand and his arm was wrapped around Sara’s waist. He had lost his tie, so his tuxedo shirt was open at the collar. Both grinned as if they were the happiest people on the planet. “Apparently what you said on this day didn’t matter, did it?”
Sara paled. “Jeff, I can explain.”
“There’s nothing to explain!” Jeff yelled, throwing the picture across the room. “I’m not stupid, Sara!”
“I went to his house for tutoring,” Sara snapped, crossing her arms over her chest, looking indignant.
Jeff couldn’t believe the lie, and he wondered what happened to their marriage. He thought they were in love. He thought they had fantastic sex. He thought they had fun together. It wasn’t until she decided to go back to school that the marriage cooled, and now he understood why.
“If tutoring involves your nipple in his mouth, then you were educated pretty well,” Jeff sneered, and turned toward the window. “Don’t patronize me, Sara. Don’t try to lie.”
He heard her in the bedroom, and a few minutes later, she came out with a suitcase.
“Going back for more tutoring?” he asked. Tears welled in his eyes. He felt as if he was standing in the middle of the desert and he didn’t know which way to go. He was lost and confused. He wanted to hold her and tell her they could work it out. He wanted her to leave. More than anything, he wanted to rewind the past three months and he wanted his marriage back.
“I’ll stay somewhere else tonight, Jeff,” she said.
“Before you go, just tell me why. Why did you do it?”
There was a beat of silence. “Jeff, it’s just me. This has nothing to do with you.”
Ah, yes. The old, “it’s not you, it’s me.”
“You’re a good guy, but I’m feeling . . . suffocated in this marriage, Jeff. Going back to college has reminded me that life can be fun and exciting.”
Jeff turned to her. His first love, his first broken heart. “We had fun together, Sara. We’ve been married for two years. Don’t throw it away.”
She sighed and looked down at the floor. “Jeff, it’s just that . . .”
“It’s what? It’s fucking what?” he yelled, finally losing it. “What can I do to make it better? Should I help more with the dishes? The laundry? Should I learn to cook better? Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it!”
There was a long moment of silence as they stared each other down.
“I don’t want to be married to a cop, okay?” Sara yelled. “I don’t want to talk about traffic stops and dirtbags you threw in jail! I don’t want to go to stupid barbeques with your buddies on the force! I don’t want to hear about court or stupid gossip about your co-workers! I want intelligent conversations about art and culture! I want to travel!” she screamed.
Jeff stared at her for a moment, then turned back to the window. His heart was cold. She had just told him that he wasn’t good enough for her, and at that moment, she disgusted him. “Well, you can’t be any more honest than that, Sara. Go back to your professor and talk about art and culture or whatever else you consider to be intelligent conversation.”
With that, the door closed.
“Did you try to contact her?” Dr. Fitzgerald asked, bringing Jeff back to the present.
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“And she changed her cell phone number. I went to the school but didn’t see her. She quit her job. She doesn’t want to see me. She’s avoiding me.” He wasn’t about to tell the shrink about him parking out in front of the professor’s house for hours on end. Thank God Missy had talked him out of that one.
“So how are you coping now, Jeff?”
How was he coping? He was going through the motions of his day-to-day life. He was sleeping on his couch. He felt a darkness within him growing, wanting to lash out. Not very well, thank you very much.
“I’m okay. Working through it.”
Dr. Fitzgerald checked his watch. “Our time’s up for today, Jeff. Can you come back in a couple of days?”
Jeff nodded. He would do whatever was asked of him as long as he didn’t lose the one thing in his life that was keeping him somewhat sane: his job.